Raspberry Ripple Reads is a play-reading event designed to add the dimension of difference to plays which are known within the theatre in Australia. It will also bring new work to the stage. The readings will see disabled and mainstream actors together on stage.

We are excited to announce our first Reading will be ‘Love Child’ by Australian playwright, Joanna Murray-Smith.

These readings will be a regular inclusion in the yearly schedule of Raspberry Ripple – one play per year to start with – and are a way of developing new work in an atmosphere of inclusion. We will try out new ideas with script in hand, and work out how disability can add new dimension in the context of established theatre practices.

We want to discover ways of finding new relationships within text – how new themes emerge between the characters.

At Raspberry Ripple this is gold to us. We are intrigued by the human condition, and for us, the addition of disability offers new provocation and possibility for interpretation that would not be in a reading where disability is absent.

Love Child is part of the Australian canon, by playwright Joanna Murray-Smith.

An adopted daughter comes to find her biological mother. In this reading of the work, the mother is a wheelchair user. Without altering the text, we will discover what is underneath the lines. What will happen?

Raspberry Ripple Productions, a Disability led theatre company, presents their first show, Enunciations. Celebrating the deliciousness of diversity, Enunciations will run from 19 – 21 August, 2016, at the Footscray Community Arts Centre.

Raspberry Ripple operates around the Social Model of disability, which says that the barriers put in place by a world designed for ‘normal people’ disables us far more than our bodies ever will. We aim to be instrumental in creating a pathway into mainstream theatre for disabled performers.

The founder and Artistic Director of Raspberry Ripple is Kate Hood, a passionate advocate for disability in the arts. Hood had a full career as an able-bodied actor, writer and director, for more than twenty years. She has performed in classics, musicals, TV, film and radio. Some of her credits include Prisoner, Blue Heelers and she was a prominent voice-over artist for ABC Melbourne.

Kate Hood, photo by Julie Millowick

After being diagnosed with a neurological disease, Hood became a full-time wheelchair user and struggled to find her place in the mainstream arts industry. Stories told on our screens and stages rarely include people with disability – and when those characters are seen, invariably they are played by an able-bodied actor.

“My experience of being disabled and an actor is that there is a blank space around me – I am largely invisible in my everyday life, and also, unfortunately, within my chosen profession.” Says Kate

In Raspberry Ripple‘s first show, ‘Enunciations’, eloquent words – and some not so eloquent! – will be spoken by disabled and able-bodied performers to tell the 21st century story of being in the soup together. Classic text will tug at your heart strings, new words discomfort you, both will make you fall off your seat with laughter and re-evaluate living in an able-ist world. A discombobulation of thought, mind and matter!

Raspberry Ripple productions mission is to create theatre of a professional standard using disabled performers, writers, directors, designers and technical artists.